Revisiting the Fish-Eyed Goddess in Madurai

Earlier Lee wrote that our visit to Meenakshi Temple in Madurai (on Friday, October 29th) seemed impossible to capture in photographs. The complex, dedicated to Parvati, the consort of Shiva here known as Meenakshi ("the Fish-Eyed Goddess"), is both extremely large and quite complex, filled daily with thousands of devotees, and a disjointed hodge-podge of architectural and sculptural elements impossible to aggregate into a meaningful whole.

In the end, however, he couldn't resist trying! So here's an attempt to describe our walk through this truly marvelous sacred space illustrated along the way with some digital images hopefully capturing something of the visual grandeur of the place.

Let's begin with an aerial view of the entire temple complex:

And here's a reference map indicating (in alphabetical order) the various locations visited as we trudged from spot to spot:
We approached the temple initially, having alighted from our bus a block or so away, down a narrow side street which then disgorged us onto a brick plaza just to the north of the walled complex. This approach brought gasps from us all as we emerged onto the plaza and caught our first glimpse of one of the seven gopura dominating the horizon.

After removing our shoes and depositing them in a shoe kiosk, we entered one of the two gates [A] at the temple's eastern edge (the western gopura representing the head; those to the north and south, the arms; and the two to the south, the legs) where we found an extremely busy and colorful market in full swing.

We turned left at the first opportunity into a corridor with brightly painted ceilings , then stopped to admire a huge wedding hall [B] topped by an absolutely amazing layered teak ceiling ...

... before taking a right and climbing some stairs to look out over the Golden Lily Tank [C] from a pillared veranda from which we could also catch views of others in the temple's inventory of gopura.

We stopped to admire the temple's largest tower with its gracefully curved base and layer upon layer of polychromed images [D], ...

... then wandered along yet another pillar-lined hallway searching out a particularly nice image of Ganesha [E].

We passed by the holy-of-holies [F] housing an image of Parvati (open only to Hindus) ..
.
... and came into a huge exuberantly decorated hall. Ahead of us another Ganesha image [G] garnered obeisances from avid followers -- as did hosts of other sacred objects scattered throughout the temple corridors.

Turning to our left, we entered the Great Hall [H] in front of the sanctuary [I] housing the temple's principle image of Shiva (here known as Sundarashvara -- "the Handsome One"). Here we found a statue of Nandi, the bull serving as Shiva's steed, and a golden pillar pointing into the sky above.

We passed through another gate (where we were blessed by an elephant!) to return to the entrance hall where we had begun our trek.

Lots of shops crowded the hallway here but we still managed to find the entrance to the Thousand Pillar Hall [J] which now serves as a museum -- and where one can find a set of seven pillars that, when struck, sound out the scale used in Carnatic music.

So there you have it: a short, illustrated tour of what Lee believes to be the best temple seen on the Soul of India tour.

A Wedding in Goa Video Reconstructed

Here is a properly ordered version (in two parts) of the video Lee shot during Kevin and Jeannine's wedding on October 20, 2010. It should replace the "postmodern" effort posted earlier. What's remarkable about this whole undertaking is that the video was done on a NIKON D5000 digital camera, not a camcorder.

KEVIN AND JEANNINE GET MARRIED - PART ONE

KEVIN AND JEANNINE GET MARRIED - PART TWO

Just goes to show how technology has improved the movie-making process over the past several years!

Portraits from South India

Here's a link to a gallery of "people pictures" entitled PORTRAITS OF SOUTH INDIA pulled together today from the thousand or so shots Lee took while on tour. Heidi always accuses him of avoiding photographs of people in favor of buildings and flowers. These two hundred or so images should quiet that complaint for awhile at least!

The music in the background is by INDIAN OCEAN, a group of South Asian Indians, mainly from Mumbai, that we heard in concernt a year or so ago. We liked them so much we bought two of their CDs.

Final Notes and Future Promises

Heidi and Lee have been back in Shaker Heights now for three very full days and are adjusting gradually to being home again. Jet lag has affected Lee less than Heidi, but Heidi has gotten a lot more done as a result - laundry, making arrangements to have the bathroom wallpaper stripped and the walls painted, sending in our snowplow contract (There was snow on the ground when we returned Monday morning!), grocery shopping, banking, catching up on email, talking with friends on the phone, visiting neighbors, contacting our house cleaning crew. Lee did convene the Off Campus Studies group reading The Tale of Genji Wednesday afternoon but otherwise has been just lazing about, "adjusting" very, very gradually to his new/old surroundings.

Looking back on that marathon return travel day, there were three highlights worth adding to the litany of worthwhile tour stops:

Mid-morning in the midst of our three hour bus ride from Mysore to the airport in Bangalore, we stopped at a prison site used by a local Indian ruler to incarcerate English prisoners of war. The men were chained chest deep in leech-filled water in a vast underground grotto (only discovered when a cannon fell through the cavern roof) - doesn't seem man's inhumanity to man has changed all that much over the centuries.

The prison was part of a large fort built (with the help of French engineers) and defended by Tipu Sultan against the British until his defeat (and death) in 1799. Only the ruined walls of the fort still stand, but nearby we visited Gumbaz, the site of his tomb and the location of an annual memorial service marking the day of his death - which coincidentally had taken place just the previous Friday. Consequently the compound was more than usually crowded with visitors, mostly Muslims decked out (especially the women) in sparkly duds that attracted lots of attention from the group's cameras.

Just before lunch we made a brief stop at a silk cocoon wholesale auction center where we wandered, awestruck, among hundreds and hundreds of tables stacked with white and off-white silk cocoons brought in by locals and sold to other small scale cottage industry representatives to be spun into silk thread. None of us had ever seen anything like it before, and we left even more aware of the place of small scale enterprises in the Indian economy - no wonder there are so few chain stores around and nary a Wall-Mart in sight!

Eventually we did reach Bangalore where members of our group began to peel off, heading in different directions for the return home. Heidi and Lee waited five hours at the airport for our flight to Delhi, then spent two hours transferring from the domestic terminal to the (brand spanking new) international terminal and making our way through security (likely enhanced as a result of Obama's recent early afternoon arrival). A fourteen hour thirty minute plane ride followed, bringing us to a two hour layover in Chicago prior to our fifty minute flight to Cleveland. Somehow we survived it all to take a taxi the last several miles home to Shaker Heights.

Both of us are now working on making sense of the whole trip. A Highlight Reel in digital photo form will follow in the near future, along with a re-cut version of the Kevin - Jeannine wedding video and an assembled collection of "people pictures". So, stay tuned for some final (illustrated) thoughts.

Visits to a Sacred Mountain and a Palatial Palace

Our foggy morning ride to the summit of the Chamundi Hills on the edge of Mysore did not prepare us for the masses of folks visiting Chamundeshwari Temple, evidently a major area attraction even more popular during Dawali.

The holiday crowd swirled around the cows and the monkeys and the touts in a festive mood that soon infected our group, leading to a bangle feeding frenzy as the women swarmed a small shop and stocked up on the shiny bracelets with abandon!

Later we wandered in awe -- along with hundreds of others -- through the vast halls of Mysore Palace, a massive structure dating to 1912 and an extraordinary example of Indo-Saracinic architecture (a combination of Islamic and Hindu styles). Fortunately interior photography was forbidden, so instead we had to concentrate on actually looking at the elaborate design elements everywhere around us. We were there nearly two hours!

Tonight we attend a Farewell Dinner, than retire early to catch what for many of us will be the last good night's sleep we'll have until we return home how ever many hours from now that may be.

Don't expect another entry 'til then!

Your South Indian friends,
Lee and Heidi (and Donald, too)

Mysore or Bust!

Our day began after breakfast watching the conclusion of a twelve hour Hindu ceremony chasing away evil influences and welcoming Lakshmi, the bringer of wealth and prosperity, to the newly constructed reception area of the hotel.

The final procession was led by Peggy, one of our group, as the first to enter the lobby.

She was followed by a cow!

The Hindu priest in charge started the process Thursday evening and stayed up all night chanting and feeding the sacred fire and guiding the hotel staff in their ritual responsibilties. He was very receptive to all us onlookers, even pausing occasionally to explain the proceedings and asking our participation in the "public" chants.

At times yesterday (Friday), as our tour bus rumbled through the countryside, sometimes bumping along short stretches of packed dirt roadway, we felt like pioneers headed West rather than travelers enroute to Mysore. But along the way we stopped at a “cow wash” and again were able to observe rural life, this time in an area of India dominated by sugar cane and rice cultivation.

A late riverside lunch was a welcome respite just outside our final destination, and one of our best dining experiences brought the day to very satisfying conclusion.

The highlight of the day for Lee was climbing up the 628 steps leading to a Jain temple at Shravanabelagola housing an image of Gomateshwara, one of the religious group's most important saints and a major pilgrimage objective for Jains from all over the country. Heidi and several others watched the ascent from the foot of the hill, having decided against being carried up on litters to view the thousand year old 57 foot tall statue firsthand.

Following our arrival in Mysore and prior to dinner, we walked through a huge local market, always a photographer's paradise, particularly this time around since folks were preparing for Diwali, the festival of lights being celebrated all weekend long.

Before bed, as well, we watched fireworks light up the city (despite the intervening intermittent showers) from our sixth floor hotel room window and (on the way to dinner) were able to see (from a distance) Mysore Palace all lit up, totally outlined in twinkling white lights!

Well Worth the Trip!

We boarded our bus this morning hoping that the many hours spent getting here to Hassan yesterday would prove worthwhile. An hour or so later, having bounced over some narrow roads out into the surrounding countryside, we arrived in Halebidu at Hoysaleswara Temple, built over a period of eighty-six years by Hoysala rulers in the twelfth century but never finished. What a revelation!

Intricate carvings of Hindu gods and goddesses, dancing girls and dwarfs, elephants and mythological creatures, scenes from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata completely covered the inner and outer surfaces of the temple. The soapstone used made exquisite details possible and the stone's later hardening kept the detail crisp over all these centuries.

REMEMBER - CLICK ON ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT;
CLICK A SECOND TIME FOR A REALLY BIG PICTURE!

After a leisurely ninety minute walk around the star-shaped main building listening to Minaka's recounting of various stories connected with the images crowding the walls, we were even more impressed than when we had started.

Minaka then took us to a little visited nearby Jain basadis (temple complex). The Hoysala monarch responsible for Hoysaleswara converted fro Jainism, but his wife did not; the temple we toured was one of those at which she worshiped. It, too, was fascinating, especially since it featured the first Jain imagery we've encountered.

Following lunch, we walked around and through our third temple of the day, the Channekeshava Temple in Belur. The intricacy of the carvings here surpassed even those found in Halebidu!

While zipping around from temple to temple we also had the chance, as we do every day, to observe life "up close and personal" with some striking photographic results.

On the Road to Hassan

Not much to report today.

We flew from Kochi to Bangalore early this morning, got some cappuccino at the airport there, boarded our bus and drove (with a stop for a thali lunch - a circle of small metal bowls surrounding a couple rounds of roti flatbread) and drove (with a second coffee break) and drove (with a couple of bathroom stops) and drove until we reached the Hoysala Resort here in Hassan around 5:30 PM this evening.

We'll see if the whole trip was worth it when we visit a couple of World Heritage Site temples tomorrow!

At Leisure in Kochi

Under Lee's expert direction – or so the picture makes it appear – five of our group strained to raise the nets out of the Arabian Sea. The fishermen who do this for a living raise and lower these immense nets – called “Chinese Nets” locally because of their origin in that far off land centuries ago – some 450 times a day!

We performed the joint operation involved only once and netted only a single fish, not much to show for the amount o human effort involved.

Our stop here along the shore of the harbor in Kochi (also known as “Cochin”) was the first of four for the day, a relatively relaxing one compared to our usual schedule.

The others were at an Anglican church, St. Francis, the original burial site of Vasco De Gama; a Catholic basilica, Santa Cruz Cathedral; the Jewish Paradesi Synagogue; and Mattancherry Palace, also known as the “Dutch Palace”, a gift to the local maharaja originally by the Portuguese and later (following an extensive renovation) by the Dutch. All this is indicative of the multiplicity of cultures contributing to local life in Kerala.

There followed some actual free time, devoted to lunch and to some rewarding shopping in the local Jewtown shops (not a politically correct appellation but historically correct and preferred by the fourteen remaining Jewish residents of the area).

Lee was especially pleased to find a copy of Manu Joseph's Serious Men in a local bookstore; the author had just today been announced as the recipient of The Hindu (“India's National Newspaper Since 1878”) Best Fiction Award for 2010 for this, his first novel. That find took some doing since he didn't remember either the author's name nor that of the book's title and had to look through lots of possibilities before hitting on the correct one, all with the help of the bookstore clerk anxious to make a sale!

This evening Heidi's off to see a Kathakali performance. Lee's staying behind, totally caught up in Joseph's novel – and, of course, in keeping this blog up to date.

Off to the Kerala "Backwaters"

We drove two hours south of Kochi this morning to visit a milk co-op serving some forty families by supplying them with a readily accessible terminal at which to “deposit” their excess milk for purchase, pasteurization and distribution by milk collection agencies.

A little further down the red clay road we spent an hour or so at a public elementary school, one with which Overseas Adventure Travel's charity wing established a helping relationship earlier this year. The school currently is little more than a shell with very little in the way of supplies beyond the basics: shared desks, textbooks, slates for the kids to write on, a raggedy blackboard. The kids, however, ranging from five to ten years old, were ecstatic to see us and kept us going – playing games, reading books, singing songs – until exhaustion set in!

Our last stop was to spend some time with a women's self-help group which has met twice a week for the past six years to fry banana chips or sew blouses for sale to local merchants to earn “pin money” shared among the group of fourteen, an example of micro-financing that has worked remarkably well throughout Kerala.

Then we got to relax for a couple of hours, eating lunch while floating along on the “backwaters” and watching daily life as it played itself out along the banks of the canals crisscrossing this entire coastal area. Heidi and Lee remember our prior experience here in 2008 with great fondness and found this much more brief sojourn equally relaxing.

Later the group broke up into two smaller contingents to have dinner with local host families. Our group of seven enjoyed a particularly lively evening with a family of four, including twenty-one and fifteen year old daughters, a stay-at-home mom and a retired professional travel planner (one who helped OAT pull together its Soul of India itinerary). The opportunity to quiz the daughters about life among the young in India was especially appreciated.

Tomorrow we head off to explore Kochi itself, like its population, one of the most cosmopolitan and diverse entities in all of India (and largely a review of our earlier visit two years ago).

Sunday, Blessed Sunday

Three highlights of the day:

• LUNCH at the wonderfully comfortable home of a Kerala family, owners of a rubber plantation - one with a commanding tree top view of the Western Ghats and surrounded by fruit trees, pineapple fields and groves of towering rubber trees.
  
  We learned how the family got into the rubber production business more than forty years ago as a means to retain ownership of their land (threatened with government confiscation until converted to rubber trees, an exempt land use category championed by the current owner's grandfather in the Kerala assembly).
  
  We watched a demonstration of how tree tapping is done – each of their eight employees taps 300 trees a day once every three days, in essence taking care of 900 trees as their contribution to the plantation's production.
  
  We also met and talked with members of the family, including a visiting son working towards his CPA certification and a daughter's first child, the owner's first grandchild.
  
  

• THE DRIVE BETWEEN PERIYAR AND KOCHI through the Western Ghats which took us through some fantastic, lush mountain scenery on a bright, sunny day with just enough short stops along the way to keep us from going stir crazy on our tour bus. The wild flowers and water falls along the way were particularly memorable.
  
  The enormous tea plantations were also fascinating! Shaded by Silver Maples from Australia (with pepper vines growing on each tree trunk) and each bush sheltering cardemon plants, the whole operation made excellent use of agricultural space.
  
  

• A CHANCE ENCOUNTER with an Orthodox Christian procession in the midst of a four day walking pilgrimage across Kerala to the grave site of the group's founder and first saint who died in 1902, a trek undertaken each year to honor his memory on the anniversary of his death.
  
  Hundreds of devotees walked along the side of the road or rested briefly nearby; several talked with us to explain what was going on – as did their spiritual leader (who blessed us all, one by one, with a touch to the head before we re-boarded our bus to continue our own pilgrimage here to the capital of the province in Kochi).
  

A Blessed Sunday, indeed!

A Day in the Mountains

Three of us left at six o'clock in the morning with our guide to line up for tickets to take a seven thirty boat ride around a lake in the Periyar National Wildlife Preserve to view the local wildlife. The mountain scenery was an added bonus to sightings of wild dogs, two kinds of deer, lots of birds, warthogs but no elephants or tigers (oh,my)! The ride proved a relaxing beginning to another busy day, one dampened by intermittent showers but still chock full of activities.

Next on the agenda was a visit to an organic spice garden where Taj, our young host, showed us some of the many, many varieties of spices grown locally, including pepper, cardamon, allspice, turmeric, mace, curry and cocoa. We were surprised by how some were grown, the kinds of plants involved and the parts thereof going into the spice itself.

For lunch we crowded into an apartment kitchen and, under the tutelage of our hostess, her sister and a neighbor, prepared lunch together. Actually our three hostesses had done most of the preparation but left the making of a couple of dishes to us. We gamely plunged right in and in the end had a delicious meal!

A brief elephant ride in the rain followed. It felt somewhat like a pony ride for grownups...

Back at our bungalow in the late afternoon we were visited by a curious pack of local monkeys who swung in to take a look and then vanished just as quickly.

After dinner this evening we attended a splendid performance of two traditional dance pieces performed by a graceful and extremely well trained young fifteen year old dancer whose every movement of eye and hand and head helped tell the stories she presented for our entertainment. What an accomplished artist!

A full dance card indeed, don't you think?

Searching for Periyar (not Perrier)

Yesterday (Friday) evening, at the end of a perilous vertical climb winding up from the plains surrounding Madurai after dark into the Western Ghats, our bus crossed over from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu into Kerala and entered the resort area of Periyar.

We're here to enjoy the cool mountain air, visit a National Wildlife Refuge and tour an organic spice garden. Kerala, as we know from our earlier visit in 2008, is particularly known for its spices. We'll even have a chance later today to mix some for ourselves since we're also scheduled to cook our own lunch meal today (under supervision, of course)! And we have been promised an elephant ride into the bargain...

Friday morning we awoke to learn that our guide's father had died suddenly during the early morning hours and that he would be leaving us in order to take up responsibilities connected with the funeral arrangements. A local guide joined us for our morning activities, then Manika Ashoka flew in from Chennai to assume Srini's leadership role. She had just finished with another OAT group the evening before but didn't hesitate when asked to jump in to help in this emergency situation. We'll all miss Srini's expertise and his meticulous planning but appear to be in equally capable hands under Manika.

Touring South India in many ways lacks the constant “wow factor” present when traveling through the North of India – from Delhi to Jaipur and Khajuraho, then on to Agra and the Taj Mahal. That's a hard act to follow. In our travels through Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka, however, we do have the opportunity to experience India at a more personal level. And that seems to be what OAT is aiming for in planning our itinerary.

Yesterday morning's visit in Madurai to Meenakshi, a Hindu temple devoted to Parvati (also called “Meenakshi”), the consort of Shiva (who also merits his own sanctum sanctorum within the temple complex and is escorted each evening to spend the night with Meenakshi), was this tour's exception to that “experience the soul of India” motif.

Meenakshi is one “wow” of a place, believe me!

From the seven huge gopura guarding the various entrances and central worship spaces to the brightly painted ceilings and the corridor after corridor lined with brilliantly executed sculpture, this is one pretty amazing place.

Photos don't do it justice. They isolate items from one another which in reality abut each other and taken together add up to much more than the sum of the individual parts.

Furthermore this is an active temple, one visited by 10,000 Hindu worshipers daily. That means the space is filled with life and sound and rituals and offerings and elephants and shops selling all manner of objects, sacred and profane. It was an experience well worth removing our shoes and socks to undertake; and, in our minds at least, ranks right up there with the best India has to offer.

Usually Lee takes about one hundred digital images on any given day. At Meenakshi he snapped nearly 150 in just that one location!

It's hard after an experience like that not to want to take something of it home with you. The central image in Meenakshi's Hall of A Thousand Pillars is a bronze image of a Dancing Shiva. Lee hoped to find a similar image to add to his “god shelf” at home and managed to locate a small bronze at the National Folk Art store across from the temple itself. It will evoke a very special memory of a very special place forever after.

Following our temple visit and brief shopping excursion, we set out in individual bicycle rickshaws for a drive-by view of the older part of Madurai, a city among the oldest in India – and full of crowded, narrow, bustling streets and alleys impossible to see any other way. On our earlier visits to Old Delhi and Varanasi, this kind of wild ride was one of Lee's favorite experiences – and this one was no exception, helping in this case to boost his photography count well up into the two hundred and fifty range!

On our afternoon bus ride we stopped along the highway and persuaded a local brick maker to demonstrate his manufacturing technique. Actually, as seems true in many of these instances, the brick-making operation is shared among several families, in this case three sisters and their respective spouses and children. Theirs was only one of dozens of similar cottage industry enterprises scattered along the road outside Madurai, all doing well in the building boom atmosphere that dominates the current Indian economy. Everyone's building and they all need bricks!

Once again, as has become the usual case, we had a busy, busy, busy – and extremely exciting and rewarding – day. And along the way, as well, we came to appreciate just a bit more of the true “soul” of India.